what's the average salary for a MBA holder/ Is my sister's MBA worthless at this age?

My younger sis who is 22 just finished her MBA. she is turning 23 in august. i want to know what level of job she should be aiming for and what salary range.
I know, like many on here will agree with, that 22 is quite young to be carring an MBA particularly as she would have the disadvantage of many employers thinking she has no experience but it is what it is.

Can anyone offer any advice on what to do? what salary range/ kind of job should she strive for? what level kind of job should she accept just to overcome the no-experience disadvantage?

any advice/opinion is welcomed.
if it helps, she has her Bachelors degree in Accounting and her Masters in MBA.

Or should she take a year off on vacation?

thanks

olddog

Last edited by olddog; Jul 11th, 2008 at 05:51 PM.

_______________Stumbled upon RFD by mistake, best mistake of my internet life i must say......

I'm amazed that at 22 she was able to gather the required (in most cases) experience that you need before even applying to the MBA program. Most places require a minimum of 3 years.

Unfortunately without the previous experience, most employers that I know wouldn't hire an MBA as they are worried that the person will want a higher salary, or will feel over-qualified due to the degree and not their actual work history.

At this point, she would be like any university graduate, where she needs to get a job and use that to launch into something else. I'd say her degree is not useless, but by itself it's a very hard sell nowadays.

Currently I work as a manager in a Big-4 accounting firm and have a lot of co-workers who have the same education as your sister. Although a vacation may be nice after so much school, taking a whole year off would be a huge mistake since her degree will become less effective the more time goes by. Take a month off, figure out what direction you want to go in and then aggressively start pursuing work. Take the off time to build her contacts as it's always who you know and not what you know.

Can anyone offer any advice on what to do? what salary range/ kind of job should she strive for? what level kind of job should she accept just to overcome the no-experience disadvantage?
Or should she take a year off on vacation?

Since she did accounting in undergrad, is that that she's pursuing now or has she changed fields?

Anyway, 22's young as TotallyKiller has pointed out. It's going to be a hard sell. But tell her to not give up but at the same time don't have huge expectations. MBA without experience = newly graduated BBA or BComm.

Her salary expectation should be in the entry level range of around 42 - 48k, depending on industry as she has no experience to sell.

Obviously this person is super book smart and hardworking. We can understand that. Bottom line is that there are an equally large number of older, more mature, and well rounded people willing to do whatever she can and more for cheap. So to answer your question - I'd say 48K.

Book smarts don't count for very much at all right now. People with experience are out of work.

Does experience really matter for finance-type MBA jobs? I can see it important if the MBA grad wants to go into a manager position or management consulting, but if it's just number crunching then I don't see how pre-MBA is necessarily important. Maturity matters, of course, but that's often orthogonal from work experience.

That's pretty amazing!
I'm 25, starting my MBA full-time this fall and I'm one of the youngest in my class.

The advice by the previous posters seem sound - get an entry-level position without expecting the salary.. if she went through a MBA at 22 then she probably has the fortitude to work her way up fairly quickly regardless of age.

_______________--
"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

seriously!! I got out of school with an engineering degree when I was 24-25 because of co-op, OAC and an extra term for business courses and to bump up the avg....and now the average kid is like 22 years old with their masters...

I think I was being more realistic than negative. Your right, maybe I jumped the gun and made conclusions, maybe when the OP returns we can understand the situation more clearly.

As to my point about being a lifetime academic, maybe you saw that as an insult. But there is plenty of very smart people who add value in academia both in the fields of accounting and finance. So why should the said person not consider that path?